Re: NB4, NB5, whatever: Tricks (and philosophy) for indexing

[mebennun@nospam.icon.co.za]

Theron,

A very useful note, and it echoes my own experiences.

I have not done any indexing in NBWin, and I don't know to what 
extent the functionality is present as I retired just as NBWin hit 
the street. However, there is a superb and almost priceless 
goldmine in instruction assuming that indexing is merely 
undocumented in NBWin, and that's the Big Black Book for NB4. The 
ringbound manual for NB3 is just as good. NB's indexing powers are 
absolutely wonderful, and it blows my mind that we have heard so 
little on what is in - or in store for - NBWin.

Colleagues who have the NB4 manual are sitting pretty indeed. I 
still treasure mine.

Apart from several books, one of my achievements with NB3 was to 
compile a complete Table of Contents and Index of the first 30 years 
of an important, then-illegal (very!!!) South African "struggle" 
quarterly (actually, the African Communist, published underground 
till democracy in the 90s), listing every paper, letter, book review, 
etc etc and indexing this list (you want an article on subject X? 
Look up X in the Index which is alphabetical by subject, and it will 
list the item numbers in the Table of Contents, which is alphabetical 
by author). Unhappily for me, my name could not appear on it and I 
don't think it did me any good when I added to to my cv. But the 
problems of listing as you describe were very evident: is Zimbabwe 
also Rhodesia or Southern Rhodesia? Does Soweto go under townships? 
Indexing is an art form, and while automatic indexing saves a lot of 
time it also leads to a lot of editing. In the end you have to go 
over the index till you want to scream, to avoid the sins of omission 
and commission which make one look so utterly silly. 

I also had to do some inventive use of NB. To get each article with  
unique number, I used PG deltas and C1 deltas, finally making the PG 
and the C1 for each entry identical. This was before I had a  hard 
disk - they were just coming into use towards the end of the project. 
I started it with two 7.5" floppy drives and a 286. Oh boy......

Those were the days.... you youngsters don't know when you're lucky!

Finally: 

A HAPPY AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL FROM THE SUNSHINE 
OF A FREE SOUTH AFRICA!

Mervyn

> 

> Date: 
         Sat, 30 Dec 2000 21:14:54 -0600 (CST)
> Reply-to:      notabene@nospam.piper.hamline.edu
> From:          "Theron F Schlabach" <theronfs@nospam.goshen.edu>
> To:            Multiple recipients of list NOTABENE <notabene@nospam.hamline.edu>
> Subject:       NB4, NB5, whatever:  Tricks (and philosophy) for indexing

> Greetings:
> 
> Today I was looking back through some of last summer's exchanges among
> Notabenerei and noticed one about page-proof indexing with NB4.5.  I've
> done quite a bit of indexing with NB3 and NB4 versions.  I think my
> comments must apply to NBW also, although I have not yet tried it for
> indexing.  In any case, here are some tips and some thoughts.
> 
> (My comments assume a separate file for each chapter, but my readers can
> probably adapt them to other applications.)
> 
> Indexing page proofs:
> 
> 1)  Of course, at the beginning of the chapter, set the NotaBene file's
> page to match the first page-proof page of the chapter.
> 
> 2)  As the NotaBene manuals instruct, set the page length (PL) very long--I
> guess the manual suggests PL=500 lines, although I've always found PL=150
> to to do the job.  (In any case, the PL has to be long enough to keep Nota
> Bene from automatically going to the next page before you insert the
> forced-next-page command (PG).
> 
> 3)  Then, of course, go through and insert PG commands at the exact
> locations of page turns in the page proofs.  (Now as NotaBene assigns page
> numbers to entries, those numbers will indeed be consistent with the
> page-proof pages.)
> 
> More general tricks:
> 
> In a good index there will be cross references (See also... , etc.),
> appearing at the sub-entry or the sub-sub-entry levels .  Let me use "See
> also..." as an example.   In the index list you will not want it to appear
> at the point of subentry items that begin with S; you will want it to
> appear at the end.  So instead of "See also..." make it "zzz1See also...."
> If you have something else to appear below it, begin that entry with zzz2.
> Etc.  After your index is all assembled, then you can use global changes to
> remove the various zzz entries.  You may come up with some more elegant
> method, but the principle will be the same:  You need some method to place
> some entries at positions other than the place where simple alphabetizing
> will put them.
> 
> For good indexes, simply do not depend only on flagging items that appear
> literally in the text.  If you do that, your computer will act like a
> mindless human indexer who knows nothing--and wants to know less--about the
> subject matter.  Such a person, and your computer, will look only for words
> (e.g., proper names, and maybe a few other designated terms).  Need I say
> that a good indexer will do much more?  For instance, a good indexer will
> be alert so that in certain contexts when the word "church" appears, he/she
> will index that location under the entry "Ecclesiology"--or when the word
> "inerrancy" appears, he/she will index it under "Scripture" and perhaps
> "Fundamentalism".  (As you might guess, most of my writing and editing has
> been in the field of religious history.)  Etc.  No indexer who is merely a
> clerk can do this well, nor can a computer--unless somebody has developed
> an indexing program that is even more sophisticated than the best
> foreign-language translation programs, which so far as I know nobody has.
> 
> (My rule is that only the author or else a high-level assistant who has
> been thoroughly involved in preparing the manuscript--conceptually as well
> as logistically--can make an index  worth the ink.  Sometimes an editor or
> some staff member at a publishing house who has worked with many
> manuscripts in the same field can do it fairly well, but probably not as
> well as the author should be able to do it.  Problem is, many authors will
> not do it well either.  Some seem not to have thought through what it takes
> to have a really good index.  And it seems that by the time they get to the
> index stage, many authors are thoroughly tired of their projects and just
> want to get the manuscripts off their desks.  I've found, in fact, that
> compiling a good index takes roughly as long as writing a chapter.  But
> when has a reviewer or a hiring committee ever paid attention to the
> quality of the index?  Yet, what a tragedy--indeed how silly--it is to do
> all the tough work of research and writing and then not make the material
> fully available to the book's users!)
> 
> P.S.  I write all of this, but have to confess that the index of a recent
> book with my name on it is not up to the standards I've just laid out.
> Before I quite knew what was happening the publisher by-passed me in making
> the index.  By the time I realized what was happening the publication
> schedule was so far along I could hardly intervene.  Someone seemed to
> think that today's gee-whiz technology would assure that the index would be
> a good product.  Well, it didn't, and I've gotten some complaint.  I'm
> sorry.  All I can say is, I'm not responsible--despite my name on the book
> as editor.
> 
> Theron F. Schlabach
> 
> 
> 
> Theron F. Schlabach, Prof. of History
> Goshen College, Goshen IN 46526
> Home: 1305 S. 8th St., Goshen IN 46526
> Use home telephone:  219/533-2280
> Fax: 219/535-7445
> e-mail:
>   from off-campus: theron@nospam.goshen.edu
>   on-Goshen-campus: theronfs
> 
> May God grant peace.
> 
> 
> 
Mervyn E. Bennun,
29 Marmion Road,
Oranjezicht,
Cape Town 8001,
SOUTH AFRICA.
-----------------
mebennun@nospam.icon.co.za
(or Merv.Bennun@nospam.exeter.ac.uk)
Phone/Fax: +27 (0)21 461 5535
Cell: 0827 389 863